IN HONOR OF INDEPENDENCE DAY, some red white and blue photos.
More of this kind of stuff can be found here.
Archive for 2006
July 4, 2006
BILL KELLER: The Unitary Editor.
ROGERS CADENHEAD: “Times are tough these days for the Anglican Church. Not only are they considering a schism with their American churches to get the gay out, but this Reuters photo indicates that their leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is a disembodied head.”
I’VE BEEN PLAYING AROUND WITH THIS EDIROL R-09 WAVE/MP3 Recorder,
I’M PRETTY SURE THAT DISCOUNTED SNACK CAKES aren’t really the “Spirit of America.” But then again, that might explain the whole obesity thing. . . .
PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Jason DeParle reports:
Exasperated by his party’s failure to cut government spending, Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, is seeking cyberhelp.
Coburn wants to create a public database, searchable over the Internet, that would list most government contracts and grants – exposing hundreds of billions in annual spending to instant desktop view.
Type in “Halliburton,” the military contractor, or “Sierra Club,” the environmental group, for example, and a search engine would show all the federal money they receive.
A search for the terms “Alaska” and “bridges” would expose a certain $223 million span to Gravina Island (population 50) that critics call the “Bridge to Nowhere.”
While advocating for openness, Coburn is also placing a philosophical bet that the more the public learns about federal spending, the less it will want.
“Sunshine’s the best thing we’ve got to control waste, fraud and abuse,” he said. “It’s also the best thing we’ve got to control stupidity. It’ll be a force for the government we need.”
But Coburn’s plan, hailed by conservatives, is also sponsored by a Democrat, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, and applauded by liberal groups that support activist government.
Yes, the anti-pork movement is pretty bipartisan. And why shouldn’t it be? Sadly the pro-pork movement is pretty bipartisan, too . . . .
MICKEY KAUS ON THE IMMIGRATION DEBATE: “It’s all eerily reminiscent of the welfare debate, in which anti-welfare candidates sincerely bashed welfare and pro-welfare candidates insincerely bashed welfare. We know how that turned out.”
Hmm. That was another issue on which Kaus was the driver, too.
TOM KALIL (who I know from my old law firm, though we didn’t quite overlap there) has an oped on creating markets for vaccines that’s worth your time.
July 3, 2006
IT’S STILL A NEAR-MISS IN ASTRONOMICAL TERMS: “A large asteroid hurtled harmlessly past the Earth early Monday at a distance of about 269,000 miles _ slightly farther away than the moon. . . . Asteroids the size of 2004 XP14 collide with Earth about every 84,000 years. Scientists said it’s hard to predict what would happen if such an event occurred because it depends on the object’s makeup, its angle and speed, and whether it was headed for the ocean or land. An asteroid similar in size to 2004 XP14 would probably punch through the atmosphere and cause destruction on a regional scale, one expert said. If it smashed into the United States, it would probably destroy several states, but not the entire continent, said Don Yeomans, who heads the Near Earth Object Program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.”
BILL ROGGIO REPORTS on the deteriorating situation in Somalia.
A RESEARCH FRAUD INVESTIGATION at Yale. Plus, conflicts of interest at Stanford.
A NEW LIEBERMAN SLOGAN? “Annoy the blogosphere, vote Joe.” Well, I wouldn’t be annoyed. (Via Brendan Loy, who is much amused).
UPDATE: Indeed: ” Cursing at Kos. Firedoglake says ‘Sore Loserman.’ Isn’t it strange to see Democrats cursing him with the very wordplay that drove them up the wall in 2000?”
They’ve never come down from that wall . . . .
ANOTHER UPDATE: David Corn observes a Hillary problem:
This primary race is–or should be–important to her and other Democrats because it shows how the war can split the party. And that could become the dominant theme of the 2008 race for the Democratic presidential nomination. If the war in Iraq remains a mess a year-and-a-half from now, the Democratic presidential primary will be all about what to do in Iraq. Many Democratic primary voters will be looking for an antiwar, pro-withdrawal candidate (Senator Russ Feingold?) and reluctant to vote for any candidate who has supported the war and stood by it (as has Hillary Clinton). Clinton will certainly have the deepest pockets of any of the candidates–and money usually beats all else (though that didn’t work for Howard Dean in 2004). But if Hillary Clinton is on the wrong side of the war (as far as most Democratic primary voters are concerned), the race will be a bitter and divisive one.
I think that a lot of the Democratic activist base — and nearly all of the “netroots” establishment — will be bitterly antiwar regardless of events on the ground. You can see that in their treatment of Lieberman today. It’s pretty clearly subordinating their alleged top goal, regaining control of the House and Senate, to their real goal, striking out at anyone who supports the war regardless of their political affiliations or other positions. Actions speak louder than words. And yes, it’s likely to be very damaging for the Democrats. Can you say “McGovern?”
HOW CAN WE TRUST THEIR JUDGMENT ON WHAT TO PUBLISH, when they can’t even figure out what side we’re on? The NYT writes:
In 1985, The Times reported that a Marine colonel in the White House was overseeing the secret war against the Nicaraguan contras. The newspaper withheld the name of the colonel because the White House said printing it might endanger his life, recalled a former Times reporter, Joel Brinkley.
The Post named Oliver North the next day.
And twenty years later, they still haven’t figured out that the war was against the Sandinistas, and that the contras were on our side. Wake up and smell the coffee, guys!
I’LL BE GRILLING STEAKS TONIGHT — and it turns out, I’ll be grilling for victory!
FELIPE CALDERON IS CLAIMING VICTORY in the Mexican election. The Mexican stock market has rallied.
AN OASIS OF INTELLECT AND SOPHISTICATION at the Kandahar Starbucks:
Customers say it is a meeting place for friends to exchange thoughts over a steaming coffee.
“I wait so eagerly for the coffee shop to open every evening so I can meet my friends,” said one, Abdullah Shehwar.
“It is so wonderfully quiet and only the educated come here. We can talk to our heart’s content.” . . .
Saifullah Habibi is a regular customer who has hardly missed a day since the coffee shop opened.
“You have no idea how happy I feel here,” he says.
“By late evening, I find myself dreading the moment it will close for the night.”
Customers say the coffee shop has spawned its own community of sorts.
“Conflicts and war have robbed us of our thinking. We need a space where we can think about how to deal with the label of terrorism and Talebanisation that has been slapped on us,” Mr Habibi says.
It’s a great and good place. Bring on the comfy-chair revolution!
ONE IF BY LAND, TWO IF BY SEA: More New York Times secret-spilling. Who knew this went back so far?
DID A MEDIA LEAK kill Marines in Beirut 23 years ago?
SOME PODCAST RECOMMENDATIONS, over at I’m a Chick, and a Pilot . . .
A CELEBRATION OF FIREWORKS FREEDOM IN TENNESSEE: Henry Reed would be proud.
UPDATE: A fireworks-blogging roundup from Jeremy Lott.
TED STEVENS’ UNDERSTANDING OF THE INTERNET: Now illustrated in a PowerPoint presentation by Meryl Yourish.
IN THE ASIA TIMES, a look at primitive authenticity:
Two billion war deaths would have occurred in the 20th century if modern societies suffered the same casualty rate as primitive peoples, according to anthropologist Lawrence H Keeley, who calculates that two-thirds of them were at war continuously, typically losing half of a percent of its population to war each year.
This and other noteworthy prehistoric factoids can be found in Nicholas Wade’s Before the Dawn, a survey of genetic, linguistic and archeological research on early man. Primitive peoples, it appears, were nasty, brutish, and short, not at all the cuddly children of nature depicted by popular culture and post-colonial academic studies. The author writes on science for the New York
Times and too often wades in where angels fear to tread. [3] A complete evaluation is beyond my capacity, but there is no gainsaying his representation of prehistoric violence.That raises the question: Why, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, does popular culture portray primitives as peace-loving folk living in harmony with nature, as opposed to rapacious and brutal civilization?
I think it has something to do with the new misanthropy, and with the same kind of voyeuristic idealization that led Marie Antoinette to play peasant.
I haven’t read Wade’s book, but it sounds interesting enough that I’ve ordered it.
UPDATE: Here’s more on Wade’s book, from Arnold Kling.
ANDY KESSLER’S NEW BOOK, The End of Medicine, is out today. You can hear our podcast interview with him, on how new medical technologies will revolutionize things over the next decade, right here.
GEEK ENTERTAINMENT TV reports from RoboGames 2006.
WHEN SUPERMAN SHRUGS: Doug Kern uses a superhero as a start for an essay on the burdens of power. It’s not bad, but I actually prefer this piece by Ginny from Chicagoboyz on the same theme.
As for these superheroes, well, I’m not quite sure where they fit in . . . .